Bronze medal clinches invite to White House for sailors
The Sonar crew, based in St. Petersburg, and other Paralympic and Olympic athletes will meet the president and his wife on Monday.
By JON WILSON
Published October 17, 2004
ST. PETERSBURG - Fresh from winning international glory in Greece, athletes anchored in St. Petersburg sail into the White House Monday to meet President Bush.
The president and Laura Bush will appear at a reception honoring U.S. Olympic and Paralympic athletes, including the four-member Paralympic team that won a bronze medal for sailing.
"It's something they just told us about recently," said Snell Isle resident JP Creignou.
"For me, I just became a citizen not too long ago, so it's really exciting to have that opportunity just to go there, just to be in the White House," Creignou said.
Creignou trimmed the jib on the team's 23-foot Sonar, helping the team capture its startling third-place finish last month in Athens.
"The international community was like, wow, who are these guys?" said Creignou's wife, Christin.
The team led the racing for two days of the six-day competition before losing to the eventual gold medalists from Israel and the silver winners from the Netherlands.
Skipper of the boat - named Twisted Steel With Sex Appeal - was John Ross-Duggan of California. Brad Johnson, a former Gulfport resident who lives in Fort Lauderdale, trimmed the mainsail and helped Ross-Duggan, who used a chair on rails to move while steering.
Roger Cleworth, 44, of Brandon was the alternate. St. Petersburg resident Colin Park, a former Canadian Olympic sailor, was the coach.
All sail out of the St. Petersburg Yacht Club and the Sailing Center at Demens Landing. Mark Mendelblatt, another St. Petersburg sailor, finished eighth in the Olympics Laser competition and is also on Monday's invitation list.
The Paralympics showcases disabled athletes on the same four year-cycle as the Olympics. The Paralympians compete in the same venues in many of the same sports while living in the Olympic village.
Creignou, 49, is legally blind because of a degenerative eye disease. A native of France, he is a lifelong sailor, as is Ross-Duggan, 49, a former national catamaran champion who was left paralyzed from the upper chest down after an auto accident at age 22.
Johnson, 33, graduated from the University of South Florida and received a law degree from the University of Florida. In 1993 he was involved in an auto accident that resulted in the amputation of both legs. A member of the U.S. Paralympic volleyball team in 2000, Johnson joined the sailing team just a few months before it won the Paralympic trials in St. Petersburg in November.
After winning the trials, the group trained intensely, usually blocking a week out of every month to hatch a strategy, develop a refined sense of one another's moves, and practice starts, rounding marks, and overtaking competitors.
They trained in such venues as Newport, R.I.; Marblehead, Mass.; and San Francisco.
St. Petersburg, though, has become an international leader in the world of disabled sailing, Creignou says. Formerly a video engineer, Creignou and his wife moved here from San Franciso specifically because it offered a good sailing venue.
"St. Pete was a natural place," he said.
Information from Times files was used in this report.
